In Memorial

They’re always a mix for me. Memorial Day is just that, and I always think back on the friends and colleagues lost. I think the hardest, and certainly most surreal, was the lost of Sergeant Major D. As most of you know, I was in Iraq for over a year, through all of the surge and the worst of the violence. I was stationed in the heart of the “Sunni Triangle” and it was my responsibility to travel extensively through most of Northern Iraq. I was at a BN HQ, visiting and SM D. and I were having dinner. We would discuss mission, but most of our comms were on the troops and and how they were holding up. He was very proud of his guys and worked hard to support them. He was killed the next day by an IED while on patrol. We often times take for granted the little moments. Who knew how important that brown bag dinner would be to me?

It is hard not to get numb to what we see around us. I’ve been rocketed, mortared and shot at (yes, tracers are pretty at night), but the more you come out of alive, the more you think you can handle. Then comes a SM D. to put everything back in perspective.

He’s never far from my mind, and it is not a stretch to claim that I think of him as often as I think of my own boys when I talk politics. I’ve been to over a couple dozen countries, most of which are sweltering shit-holes. The ones that aren’t sweltering shit-holes, the “modern” and “nice” ones, are typically facades, that routinely—like this administration—remind me of the Griswald Christmas Dinner: beautiful and appeasing on the outside, but rancid and corrupt inside. We are unique and special. We have something that so many want to be a part of because they see it for the special place that it is. Is there such a thing as American Exceptionalism? Of course there is. Our exceptionalism has never been about everyone being the same, but about everyone being different. Our sameness was that while we were all individually different, we were all patriotically American, supporting the ideals of America. We’re losing that, and we’re losing that because of an increased ignorance in what America is and a deliberate campaign to distort away from what America should be.

R, I told you in 2008 that Obama would be bad for Dems, but that he would be the worst thing to happen to blacks, because his failures would hurt them the most. He was suppose to be the great uniter, but 5+ years later, we see that he has been the most divisive President we’ve ever had in modern era. He was to have the most transparent Administration in history, but the only thing transparent has been his rhetoric as he rivals Nixon in paranoia, media distortion and political corruption. I keep asking you to defend him, and you repeatedly fail, instead flailing at some tangent of no consequence while ignoring the substance of the point. You were so hot-to-trot about how Obama was going to save us in 2008, and again in 2012 how Obama was going to find his grove and take the nation forward, except that you’ve never been able to point to how this was going to happen, or how it has never happened.

So what do we know now?

We know that the Administration targeted reporters who reported things that the Administration thought would hurt it. From Fast & Furious to Benghazi, this Administration actively abused its power and worked to undermine first Amendment freedoms.

We know that the Administration actively abused its power to target political opponents to undermine their ability to assemble and suppress their efforts to get out the vote. Imagine the outcry had a Republican Administration used the IRS to target a liberal group or movement, suppressing their ability to fundraise and assemble? Can you imagine the voter suppression claims that would come from that?

We know the Administration distorted and lied about the events in Benghazi because it would politically hurt them in a political season. To claim otherwise, at this point, is futile and fraudulent. The Administration lied about how the talking points were changed, who changed them. More to the point, the Administration has been exposed in its failure to properly respond to the event, demonstrating its failure to defend the men and women serving the nation.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I could also point out the political and financial corruption that has been the Department of Energy’s loan program, pumping hundreds of millions of tax-payer dollars to political contributors to the Administration for flimsy, if not out-right corrupt enterprises. Solyndra is the most popular, but Tesla (not one single car EVER manufactured in the United States), and the Chevy Volt battery company LG Chem (all Volt batteries produced in Korea) are high on the list of abject failures costing hundreds of millions of dollars. For Christ sakes, 22 of the 26 companies given DoE loans were in JUNK status at the time of the loan. JUNK.

We’re passionate on this forum with you because we see the complete fallacy of this Administration. We attempt to engage you on the premise of liberalism, but you fail to defend both. I know I want this debate, and the vast majority of the forum participants here want it as well, yet you routinely fail to engage. If you still believe—and maybe that’s a question: do you still believe?—then why won’t you defend that for which you believe? Maybe I’m not far off when I say Chicago Jesus, all you’ve got at this point is faith…

With this Memorial Day weekend, we see an Administration exposed and wanting, an America still struggling and a people wondering how they could have been so wrong.